


we could steal this car (if your folks don't mind)

by mesatrafficlights



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: It's Sweet I Promise, M/M, all i do is write soft shit, but that's okay someone has to, gratuitous niche poetry references, i am very mean to ghoul all the time, like everything i write, sad but not rly, too many poetry references, zone 5 quarantine fair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesatrafficlights/pseuds/mesatrafficlights
Summary: "He thinks that there must be some rule that someone wrote, that if you sit on top of a souped-up hot rod with your best friend in the blessed half-hour before sunset, when the sky’s still blue and gold, but it’s gentle, not cruel, that if you lean back and drop your head against the painted steel roof and get dizzy for a moment looking at the sky, everything will, in that moment, be good to you. "
Relationships: Fun Ghoul/Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	we could steal this car (if your folks don't mind)

**Author's Note:**

> fuck i got too many things to do but hey why not! i wrote this instead of translating greek so please if i have to fail my course at least give me validation

The zones are... okay, most of the time. Usually they’re bearable, if you get past the sand in your boots and the blistering sunburn on your hands and your neck. Sometimes they’re even beautiful, but that’s rare; that’s on the golden impossible evenings when everyone comes back from a clap fine, when you’re driving too fast with the sunset behind you, high on the last traces of adrenaline. 

Other times, though, they’re the closest thing you can get to hell, if you believe in it. The sun is malicious, and the air is dead. Maybe there’s a bird or two wheeling in the sky, black against the relentless, burning blue, but if there is, you don’t want to know what it’s wheeling over, what it’s found this time. 

It’s hell today. 

Nothing’s wrong, particularly, nothing’s bad, but Ghoul feels sick to his stomach as he stares at the sun on the sand outside. He hates the feeling, how guilty he feels that nothing’s even wrong, nothing bad’s happened for once, that he should be so grateful for that. For just one day of quiet, instead of the chance of another clap goin’ Costa Rica, instead of another piece of bad luck hitting them in the head like a rock thrown at a crow. 

Instead his skin crawls, and he can feel the heartbeat in his throat, feel the shaky buzz of unwelcome restlessness and maybe caffeine and a bit of fear (the fear that never really leaves, even when it does). 

He tosses the wrench he’s holding to the floor and pulls himself out from under the Trans-Am, wipes his hands on his shitty jeans (it probably makes them even dirtier, but it’s the thought that counts.) The garage, if it even passes for a garage, is connected to the diner, thank gods, and he’s grateful at not having to go out into the dead heat. The diner’s quiet; Kobra’s out with Destroya knows who, (Ghoul has a suspicion it’s the freak from the Suitehearts, Sandman, or something like that.), and Jet’s out back with the Girl, probably teaching her how to drive a car or shoot straight or throw an uppercut or something. Poison’s sitting on top of one of the tables, cross-legged, with their back against the window and the sunlight spilling around them. They have a cigarette dangling from a corner of their mouth and a notebook in their lap, and as Ghoul watches, they viciously tear a piece of paper out and throw it violently across the room. 

He wanders over to them, pulls the notebook out of their hands and idly flips through it. Sketches, mostly, in dull pencil and scratchy pen, but he wouldn’t look if he didn’t know Poison was okay with it. (They are, of course, you can’t just live with Ghoul for gods know how many years and be immune to his curiosity. He’s like the Girl’s cat or something, the way he finds interesting things.) He closes the notebook and sets it on the table. 

“S’pretty.” 

Poison makes an irritated noise and glares at the crumpled-up paper on the other side of the room.

Ghoul leans forward, catching their face in his hands. There’s strands of hair falling out of their messy bun, curling around their face in a halo of lipstick-red.

“You’re pretty.” 

Poison hums and leans down, kisses Ghoul long and slow and lazy. He can feel the itchy, crawly feeling evaporate at their touch.

He pulls away first, reluctantly, and links his arms around their neck. “Run away with me.”

Poison huffs and bumps their foreheads together. “Already done that, sugar.” Those are... worse memories, though. Full of black and white and red, but the wrong red.

Ghoul shrugs. “Again. Let’s escape. Run away. I just fixed the Trans-Am, ‘n I gotta see if she works right now.” 

A slow smile spreads its way across their face. “Anytime. ‘S the Witch after ya again or somethin’?”

He snorts and shakes his head. “Feels like it.”

Poison make a noise that’s somewhere between sadness and understanding, (not sympathy though, they both despise the idea of sympathy) and bury their head in the place where his shoulder meets his neck, press a firm kiss to the skin there. Then they sigh, slide off the table, “M’gonna get my jacket?”

Ghoul grins, scar tugging at the side of his face. “I’ll start the car.”

It’s still the closest thing from hell, today. Still full of stagnant air and malicious heat and the ghosts of every ‘joy who’s been offed there. It still weighs on him with the dead weight of fear and loathing. But, he thinks, if there’s just one thing that fixes it, it’s this. They’re speeding down Route Guano (Ghoul isn’t quite sure the brakes are perfectly fixed yet, but that doesn’t matter), and every window is open, flooding the car with a wind that picks up every crumpled magazine page and empty wrapper, looks at them, and tosses them in the air.

He thinks there must be some fucking magic, some spell the Witch cast a million years ago, that makes everything more beautiful and less terrifying when you’re looking at it in your rearview mirror. That if you drive for hours and hours and hours, with the dashboard for your altar and the cracked asphalt for your sacraments and the staticky noise of acoustic guitar through the stereo as a blessing, you can escape everything.

He thinks that there must be some rule that someone wrote, that if you sit on top of a souped-up hot rod with your best friend in the blessed half-hour before sunset, when the sky’s still blue and gold, but it’s gentle, not cruel, that if you lean back and drop your head against the painted steel roof and get dizzy for a moment looking at the sky, everything will, in that moment, be good to you. That if you roll over and watch your lover staring, entranced, at the sunset with freckles in their eyes and the red-purple of the sky bleeding into their hair, that maybe, just maybe, you can escape everything.


End file.
